Of all the things that God has made, the human heart is the one which sheds the most light, alas! and the most darkness.
The holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilisation, but it does not yet permeate it.
The malicious have a dark happiness.
I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality. -Claude Frollo.
These are true felicities. No joy beyond these joys. Love is the only ecstasy, everything else weeps.
What matters deafness of the ear, when the mind hears? The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind.
Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering.
Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.
This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.
Sire, you are looking at a plain man, and I am looking at a great man. Each of us may benefit.
He was at his own request and through his own complicity driven out of all his happinesses one after the other; and he had this sorrow, that after having lost Cosette wholly in one day, he was afterwards obliged to lose her again in detail.
Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.
Here we stop. On the threshold of wedding nights stands an angel smiling, a finger to his lips.
Jean Prouvaire was timid only in repose. Once excited, he burst forth, a sort of mirth accentuated his enthusiasm, and he was at once both laughing and lyric.
The left-handed are precious; they take places which are inconvenient for the rest.
I would rather be the head of a fly than the tail of a lion.
His judgement demonstrates that one can be a genius and understand nothing of an art that is not one’s own.
The women laughed and wept; the crowd stamped their feet enthusiastically, for at that moment Quasimodo was really beautiful. He was handsome – this orphan, this foundling, this outcast.
We need those who pray constantly to compensate for those who do not pray at all.
He had not yet lived long enough to have discovered that nothing is more close at hand then the impossible, and that what must be looked for is always the unforeseen.